Blindness Among Tribals

Incident of blindness among tribals is exceptionally high as compared to the other communities. The biological model of disease with its emphasis on phusical pathology and biological reductionism has been criticised for negtecting the social influence on health and illness. In this book an attempt has been made to identity the socio - cultural determinants of eye health and eye care seeking behavior of tribals. The present work shows that the tibals have their own traditional beliefs and practices of treating eye disease they combine different methods without considering their epistemic ontological moral and aesthetic foundations. Children are the worst victims of these methods which often render them to blindness. NPCB and other national and international agencies engaged in elimination of avoidable blindness need to address these issues in the tribal and rural area of the country in order to achieve the goals of VISION-2020. The people of this country have the right to sight irrespective of their socio-economic religious linguistic and geographical backgrounds